In a typical slant-shelf, gravity feed magazine commonly employed in canned or bottled beverage vending machines, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,938,700, issued Feb. 17, 1976, for instance, cylindrical articles are stored in parallel storage racks inclined to the horizontal and generally aligned for gravitational movements of articles from front to back of the vending machine. Articles are discharged from the storage racks into a vertically extending drop chute that communicates at its lower end with an inclined delivery chute via a curvilinear guideway so that the cylindrical articles exiting from the lower end of the drop chute transit along the curvilinear guideway to the linear and downwardly sloping delivery chute which is blocked at its lower end by an article vending mechanism adapted to dispense articles one-by-one to a discharge hopper or vending stage in response to customer deposit of an appropriate coin value for a selected article.
Serious problems arise in the utilization of such a slant shelf magazine in that the weight of the articles in the vertical drop chute often crushes the lower articles, while the transition of such weight via the curvilinear guideway and discharge chute imposes heavy loads on the vend mechanism which cause undo wear of parts in such mechanism and in many cases jam the vend mechanism in an open position whereby the articles may be freely released or "jackpotted" to the customer without the intended coin deposit and article selection functions being performed.